Chengdu and the Pandas! soooo cute!

Now we are about halfway through the trip and its time for my flight to Chengdu and THE PANDAS!!  This was definitely a highlight of the trip.  Chengdu is a lovely city – although another enormous one we were lucky enough to be staying by an area which also has lots of little lanes mainly with bars and restaurants but also stalls and shops.  It was so quiet in comparison to everything else it was like I was breathing a sigh of relief walking around there and I completely relaxed.  That evening 4 of us went for a couple of drinks there – it was really nice as none of us had been out in the evening before that.

       

So first up before the Panda’s was a 3 hour drive (one way) to the Leshan Buddha – the largest in the world I think.  It’s a massive statue I think about 700 ft high.  We had to walk up a “small” mountain in Olive’s words to get to it at the top and then we took these stairs down to the bottom, and then back up again!  Just to be able to walk back to the stairs where we go down again!  I got a fair bit of exercise that day again!  I have to say that the stairs down and up around the Buddha were a challenge purely because you are walking down the edge of a cliff face and it was bloody high and bloody scary!  I’m definitely challenging my fear of heights. Then we had our lovely 3 hour drive back. 

      

The next day we were up early to see the pandas as they are most active in the morning between 8 and 10 am – I think after they have stuffed themselves full of bamboo they go to sleep.  There are only about 1000 giant pandas left in the wild (or the world – I can’t remember which) and the Chengdu Giant Panda breeding centre is one of the largest in the world trying to increase their numbers. I wasn’t sure what to expect, whether I would  hate it and feel sad like I do when I see animals in the zoo.  Acutally it was fine.  The centre is huge (and they are building more to make it enourmous) and the enclosures are quite big.  I don’t think it bothered me too much either as Pandas do sleep most of the time – eating and sleeping – sounds like my kind of life!!!

What can I say about them – they are so CUTE! Ha ha – that probably is the best thing to say, it was great as we saw them being fed and them playing with each other. We watched a film showing what work they do at the centre and about them trying to get the pandas to mate, and if they don’t do it naturally – artificially inseminating them.  When the mothers give birth for the first time they don’t have any idea what is going on and half attack the little thing that has popped out of them and knock it about with their paws, the keepers have to go into the cages to get the little babies before the mothers kill them.

Because they rear them from babies too we even saw some really tiny newborns about 2 months old (but weren’t allowed to take photos L).  You had the opportunity to get your photo taken with a panda but it cost about £100!!!!  One of the girls in the group did it, but she only got about 5 minutes with it – if that. 

   

    

We had some spare time afterwards and then had to go to the train station for our 5 hour hard seat train to Chongqing.  Not too bad – a bit like a standard train seat on the long distance trains at home, I’m getting used to these long journeys now though so 5 hours is easy. 

I think this is enough of an update for 1 day.....i might just finish off telling you all about China tomorrow and even tell you a little bit about what I have been up to in Thailand!!